The invention relates to messaging between terminals in different communities, such as communities served by different service providers.
The increased availability of data networks, such as the Internet or intranets, has increased accessibility among nodes coupled to the data networks. Example communications across such data networks include electronic mail, file transfer, web browsing, and other exchanges of data.
Electronic forms of communications between users over data networks include electronic mail and text chat sessions. However, in using electronic mail, there typically exists some delay in getting a response from a destination user. The delay includes the amount of time for the electronic mail message to get from the originating user to the destination user, the time a user takes to respond to the electronic mail message, and the time to propagate the response message back to the originating user. A destination user may not be sitting at his or her station, or the user may decide not to answer electronic mail until some later time. The originating user does not receive any indication of this, typically having to wait for a response, which may come much later. Further, with some forms of electronic mail messaging, confirmation of receipt of the message is typically not provided.
A more real-time mechanism of communicating between users is provided by chat sessions or instant messaging, available from entities such as Yahoo! Inc. and America Online, Inc. Both instant messaging and chat sessions are communications services that allow two or more individuals to establish real-time communications sessions. Chat sessions may occur in “chat rooms,” which are public on-line locations where persons having common interests may chat (using text). Instant messaging provides a private text communications session and includes programs that alert a user if someone on the user's list of individuals is on-line. A chat session can then be initiated with that person. Typically, to establish a chat or instant messaging session, users may have to log on to a third party server, referred to as a chat server in some arrangements. Alternatively, chat or instant messaging sessions are available between users that subscribe to the same service provider, which in effect provides the common server or servers for the users. Without a centralized server through which users are logged into, chat or instant messaging may not be available.
In addition, if a destination user is not logged on to a predetermined server, then that user is basically unavailable over data networks at that time. The originating user is then left with using other types of communication devices to contact the destination user, such as by using a wireline telephone or a wireless telephone.
A need thus exists for a more robust method and apparatus for communicating over data networks.